


J Train

by snagov



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Falling In Love, First Time, M/M, Musician Dean Winchester, New York City, Pining, Punk, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Writer Castiel (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24682669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: If you want to be somebody, you have to go to the Chelsea Hotel. In 1979, aspiring writer Castiel Novak takes room 109. His roommate is not quite what he expected.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 13
Kudos: 60





	J Train

_“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”_

Tom Wolfe

_“Tell me, what else should I have done?_  
_Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?_  
_Tell me, what is it you plan to do_  
_with your one wild and precious life?”_  
Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

_1979  
_ _New York City_

He’s often dreamed of the Chelsea Hotel.

There really hadn’t been any other options. He’d come to New York in order to live at the Chelsea. It is an institution, nestled there on the grey-concrete block of 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso had lived here, had spilled whiskey on the carpet. Dylan Thomas had even given the Chelsea the great honor of doing most of his dying there, coughing up a lung in Room 205 as he had gone ungently into that good night. Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin had made love on the rickety old beds. Arthur Miller had even written about it once, that queer collection of unloved poets locked up in the red-brick building. The thing is, if you want to be an artist, a _real_ artist, you have to live at the Chelsea Hotel. Or so Castiel had been told.

He’d gotten there on a Thursday. He didn’t have much, a few small bags of his clothing and a bottle of cheap drugstore shampoo. The Chelsea was mercifully close to Penn Station, so he walked the few blocks down 7th Ave. The people surround him like a school of fish, they move faster than he’s used to. He knows he’s supposed to keep his eyes on the ground like a local, he’s read it in all the guidebooks. But it doesn’t matter, his eyes rise up, further up like bubbles in champagne, toward where the buildings pierce the sky. It reminds him uncomfortably of the Tower of Babel, how in our audacity we had built a tower to Heaven. The Lord had looked at us in scorn, in fury, had torn us apart at the seams. Had scattered our languages, ripping us word from word.

At the hotel, he had stood, dark hair whipping in the December cold. Castiel’s lake-colored eyes had hungrily swallowed up the building, red against grey clouds. He ate up the flower-curled and cast-iron railings, the miserable, dingy vertical sign that had clearly been new _once_ (that _once_ is certainly not now). He took bites from the dirty windows, the old air conditioner units hanging off the sides. The pigeons, grey and unperturbed, staring at him without pause.

No one comes to the Chelsea for its looks.

So he’s here. There is an uneasy silence behind the click of the lock. (He is breathless, terrified. _Have I made a mistake?_ ) Castiel drops the bags on the narrow, lump-filled twin bed and hangs his tan-colored trenchcoat on the iron footboard. The room is nothing much to speak of. It is shabby, the curtains are fraying and sunfaded. There are ghosts in the room, empty sockets. It doesn’t matter, it’s cheap and it’s _here._ Outside, past the little window with its fire escape, the city beats on. The sound of traffic drifts in, pedestrians, children, maybe a dog. The wallpaper is dingy and yellow, bleached where the sunlight can find it, and he’s sharing the room with someone else. _It doesn’t matter._ Joy curls up in his stomach, explodes like a geyser. He is _free_ , onto the first step of something greater. He shivers a little.

_I am here. I made it here. What the fuck am I doing?_

Castiel lays on the white, starched sheets. Industrial grade, made to be tossed into hot bleach and hot water and never again spared a second thought. Hundreds of backs have lain on these linens. _Breathe, just breathe._ His hair is a dark stain, spread out like ink, spread out like dark treebranches across a pale sky. He carries childhood still in the ghosts of his face. A bit of baby fat there in the cheeks, a smoothness to the skin, brightness to the eyes. His fingers splay out across the sheets, smoothing down the waves of fabric where he lay. (His pale fingers are long, in that way that way all twenty-year-old hands are, as if they had reached adulthood faster than the rest of him)

Deep, deep below the buttoned shirt, set on the inside of his right forearm is something that looks like a tattoo. Every human wears it, these peculiar words. They are different for every person. Mothers tell their children that the heartmarks are borrowed words, they are not your own. _This is what your true love will say to you, this is what will make you fall._ (Castiel’s mother had never said anything about the heartmarks. He had learned about it from books and other children, wondering what the words said. Wondering why he wore them at all.) The heartmarks are always difficult. They are not the first thing that your love will say to you, nor (if you’re lucky) the last. They are the thing that tips your heart over, turns over the engine, causes you to suddenly pause and look again and think _oh, I think I’m falling in love with you._ Castiel has heard too many stories of people forcing the words, saying them to get someone else to fall for them. He wears long-sleeves. He does not show his to the sky. He listens keenly for the words, snatched out of everyone’s mouths. “ _Come on, do you trust me?”_ Castiel doesn’t know why someone would say that to him, he cannot imagine how someone would get to those words. So, he frowns a little, keeps his arms covered. He waits. (Castiel has always wanted to fall.)

Castiel had always rather imagined that once he made it to the city, he’d throw down his bags and tear into it like a feast set before a starving man. Instead, he is strangely hesitant. It drones on out there, past his window, as if to remind him that it had been there before him and would be there after him. He tries to think of places to go, maybe get a bite to eat. Find a diner somewhere. Nothing comes to mind, he’s managed to forget everything he had looked up while on the train. He studies a map of the subway and panic flushes through him, riding on the backs of his red blood cells like oxygen. _I have no idea what I am doing._ He doesn’t know where he is, not really. He knows that this is Manhattan, a little neighborhood called Chelsea. If he looks at the map, he can see that he’s near to the F train, the M, the 1, the A. He’s not sure what any of that means, where any of that goes. If he is here then, at point A, where is point B? He’s lost, once again, a stranger in a strange land.

Sleep collects heavy in his eyes, in his bones. _I will just lay here for awhile. It will still be there later.  
_

* * *

When Elvis bought Graceland in March 1957, he knew it was where the Garden of Eden had originally been located. The experts, archaeologists and religious scholars, all disagreed. Certainly, according to intellectual review, according to science and fact, Eden (if it had ever existed at all), had been somewhere in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, nestled within the watery arms of those mother rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. Not Elvis, he knew things in his bones, he had known Paradise is in Memphis, Tennessee, somewhere in the cradle of the Civil War. He’d bought that piece of Eden for $102,500. He’d died there later, in August 1977, still in Eden.

Castiel knows things in his bones. They were all wrong. Graceland, the Promised Land, is somewhere in New York City.

* * *

He is not alone when he wakes.

“Hey,” the boy says. He is peculiar; he is beautiful as a bonfire. Castiel shifts a little, discomfited. He tilts his head, considering the other man. Twenty-two, perhaps. Thereabouts. Tanned arms, hair the color of haybales and straw. Eyes like toadskin. He’s got that wide, easy smile that comes out of the midwest. His jeans are torn ragged in the knees and he smells like cheap soap and stale beer. _Oh. Hello there._ (It is a dangerous thing, waking up. You do not know what you will find. Castiel knows now that he will always divide his life into two epochs. Before Dean Winchester; After Dean Winchester.)

“Hello,” Castiel says. His pale eyes widen with caution, fingers tightening against the cotton woven blanket. He sits up, brushing the sleep from his face, pulling cobwebs from his eyelashes. His dark hair is mussed, memory of the sheets imprinted in red lines on his face.

“You the new roommate? Man, I hope you’re better than the last one,” the boy grins, wide and artless, “I’m Dean, by the way. Dean Winchester.”

“Castiel Novak.”

“That’s a weird name, Sodapop.” Castiel quirks a night-colored brow, unsure of the reference. “You want a beer? I just hit the bodega.” Dean holds up a plastic bag.

“Yes.” He holds his hands open. Dean tosses a can of cheap Schlitz beer at him. It is cold. He feels oddly warm, blush creeping up from his chest to his neck to his cheeks. He considers holding the can against his head. _Would that be a weird thing to do?_ (He’d grown up privately tutored by his mother, always kept away from other kids. He had never been allowed to watch television, to pick up a magazine. He has no reference points. Castiel is never sure what is strange, he is never sure what is normal.) The beer tastes bitter. He is not sure he likes it.

“Did you just get here?” Dean asks. His long throat works as he drinks, that Adam’s apple bouncing like a buoy on a lake. Cas tries not to look. He searches out other details, like the diamond pattern in the carpet, the worn-down tread of Dean’s boots.

“Yes,” Castiel says, “this afternoon.”

“Right on. You take the train to Penn?”

“How’d you know?”

“That’s how everyone gets here.” Castiel nods, watching Dean wipe the condensation from the side of the aluminum can. He is no different, of course. It is an uncomfortable feeling, walking in the path of others. He had taken a Greyhound bus first, from middle-of-nowhere lakedrenched Michigan to Chicago. Then the train, packed, whistling and metallic. The country had grown dull with sky and trees as it had rushed past the window. Castiel had read, he had tried to sleep when it was quiet. He tried to guess when they cut through the Appalachians. The train had taken two days to get from Chicago to New York, it had been plenty of time for boredom. He’d packed most of his books away in his trunk and didn’t want to fuss to get them. The only one in his small backpack was Jack Kerouac’s _On The Road_. He’s a bit sour about the whole thing, it should have been perfect. But the book had rung a bit hollow to him, he doesn’t know how to relate to any open-road adventures. (He’s never been anywhere before. Not until now.)

“How long have you been here, Dean?” He looks around the room. Dean’s side is tidy. There are few half-drank glasses of water on the side table, a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s _Breakfast of Champions._ (It is cracked at the spine, open and face down.) A dented electric National guitar is over in the corner. A turntable dominates the space, surrounded by a pile of records like a shrine.

Castiel’s side looks oddly empty compared to Dean’s. He has the urge to take his books, his clothes, and scatter them over the surfaces like a claim. To plant his boots on the floor somewhere like a flag. _This is mine now, I exist. I am here._

“About a year,” Dean says, picking at the skin around his nails. “Give or take.” Castiel nods, swallowing. He tries to figure out Dean, the strange combination of his appearance (leather jacket, leather boots) and the easy countenance. He’s always heard that he would find no kindness here. That seems curiously wrong.

“Where are you from?”

“Kansas,” Dean says, laughing. “Shitfuck of a town called Lebanon. We’d worked our way up to a whole _two_ stoplights when I got the hell outta there.” Dean shrugs, runs a hand through his hair. Castiel watches him, it looks entirely effortless. He wants to remember how to do it exactly. If he can copy the motions, mimic the way Dean shrugs, brushes his hair, then maybe he can pretend to belong. “So, what’s your story?”

“Pardon?”

“Why are you here, Cas?” Dean says, spreading his hands over the sky. “Why did you come to New York? Everyone’s got a reason.”

“I want to be a writer,” Castiel says quietly. _I’m looking for somewhere to belong to. Looking for something like Graceland._

“You a good writer? I bet you’re good.” Castiel shrugs, he doesn’t know. His few teachers had liked his work, but being good in Michigan is different than being good in New York. There, he’d won a few contests. Taken third place in the Albion College Poetry Contest. Small fish; small pond.

“Why did you come here?” he looks at Dean.

Dean shrugs, “Eh, I don’t know. Didn’t have anywhere else to go, I guess.” Castiel nods. It is a strange city. New York belongs to the rudderless. It is like the drain catch, collecting everyone who had nowhere else to belong to. If you cannot claim a place as home, then the city waits; be patient, you’ll find your way there eventually. _Flotsam und jetsam._

* * *

There are many mythical places in legend. For most writers, they have always been in the west, following the sun to its’ death. Tolkien had talked of the the mythical west, to where his heroes had retired. Avalon is in the southwest of England. It had even stuck around in American mythology, when Horace Greeley, that old editor, had said _go west, young man._ We came from Eden, we seek Eden again. Castiel wants to find the Promised Land, to walk somewhere where his name is going to _mean_ something, where he’s going to be _good_ at things, be of _consequence_. ( _Make something of myself.)_ He always has to be a bit different, he had looked east instead.

The itch to explore digs at him, somewhere deep between the shoulder blades. Where does it lead? Where are we going (where have we been)? He aches with the need to _get on with it already,_ that strange sticky feeling that destiny is just around the next corner waiting. It is so hard, so much, wanting to swallow down the moon, filled to the brim and antsy with the promise of your own future.

He looks over, across the room. Dean is asleep on the narrow twin bed, wearing streetlight like a blanket. It comes up, up the back of his throat, he needs to crack the boy open and read him like a book. Dean contains entire universes that Castiel has never seen, he wants to put on the spacesuit. He wants to see. (He cannot say anything. The way he wants to study Dean is _wrong._ He knows this, there is no sympathy out there for men who invite other men to their beds. He holds the awful queerness in his belly like a sickness, trying not to throw it up. It is awful, necrotizing. It spreads to all of him. To his hands, which ache to touch Dean’s face. To his eyes, that latch on to the boy. Castiel has always loved beautiful things.)

* * *

“You like music, Cas?”

“Of course.”

“What do you like?”

“I don’t know much about it. Classical, I suppose. That’s what my mother played.” He thinks of his mother, who preferred large and dramatic arrangements. Who always played Tchaikovsky in the winter. Vivaldi in the summer; Liszt in the spring.

“I wanna be a famous musician,” Dean says, he lays on the bed, stretching his arms out to hold the sky. “Hey, what are you doing on Saturday? My band got booked at CBGB. You wanna come? We’re opening.”

“Where is that?”

Dean stares at him, open-mouthed, “You don’t know CBGB? Dude, it’s like… a fuckin’ _institution_.” Delight gathers in the corners of his mouth. “ _Everyone’s_ played there. The Ramones, Patti Smith, The Clash.”

“I don’t know any of those.” Dean grins, runs a hand through that hair.

“‘Course you don’t,” he says, “You’re somethin’ else, man. Did you come from another world or, like, live in a cave? I’m gonna teach you.”

Castiel laughs, “Yes, Dean. You can teach me.”

Dean shakes his head, “You’re so weird, Cas. Tell me you’ve at least seen _Star Wars_?”

“No,” Cas admits, but Dean is smiling so he smiles too.

“I know your show will be great, Dean,” he says. He means it. Even if Dean is a terrible guitarist, he has that unlikely charisma that can electrify a crowd. He could make entire high schools of girls (and a few boys) fall in love with him. (Castiel is quite sure of this, he breathes too quickly when Dean is near. He likes to sit too close; he stares too much.)

“Shit, Cas, I just wanna _be somethin’._ You know what I mean?” Yes, Castiel knows, he knows what it’s like to be terrified of being forgotten. They say there are two deaths. There is the death of your body, yes, but the second death comes later, when your name is spoken for the last time. _Don’t forget me, oh god, please don’t forget me._

He looks over at Dean, who has collapsed on his bed with arms spread wide to the ceiling, ready to hold the world in his grip. _No one could forget you._ He stares at Dean’s similarly covered arm, wrapped in the familiar leather jacket. (Castiel would never be able to smell smoke, never be able to smell leather again without thinking of Dean.) _What does your arm say?_ He suddenly understands all the people who had tried to make unfamiliar words fit in their mouths, hoping to be a little piece of fate. Maybe they had lied to themselves, a little bit accidentally, overwhelmed by hope and desire. Castiel is suddenly very glad that he does not know what Dean’s arm says, he cannot promise that he wouldn’t have borrowed the words himself. Held them in his mouth like a key, crack open Dean Winchester’s chest, dig around in his heart.

A strange, heady mix of arousal and shame flushes over Castiel, colors the pale cheekbones, the back of his neck. He hears his mother in the back of his head, reading aloud from Leviticus. Chapter 18, verse 22. _You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination._ He hears his mother often, whether he wants to or not.

* * *

The buildings rise up on either side, the asphalt is black and hard beneath his feet. Steam curls out of the manhole covers and subway grates. Everything in grey and black, gradations, as beautiful as an underpainting. As beautiful as a gelatin silver photograph. He has dabbled in photography (he has dabbled in everything). Take the photograph, suspend silver salts in gelatin and paint the glass. Process the latent image, develop. He wants to tear the image from his retinas, spit it out on paper, say this, this is the city I live in, the city of promise, this is what is beautiful. _I am here; I am a part of something._

He thinks of the archaeologists of the future. They will come later, with their trowels and sifters, mark this off as a dig site. the city suspended into perfect numbered squares. They will peel away the layers, one by one, until they find old skeletons of the city, of Castiel himself. They won’t know his name but they will give him one maybe. Dust him off, put him up behind plexiglass with alarms connected and a little plaque that says _Homo sapiens sapiens, early 21st century (approx.). Discovered in New York, May 2238._ There are many stories the bones do not tell, they will not say _My name is Castiel Novak, once I met a boy named Dean Winchester. He had green eyes and mine were blue. I liked to write sometimes. I liked him sometimes. So on, so forth._

He moves on. Throws his trash in the streetcorner bin. He doesn’t wait for the light to change.

* * *

_And Lady Stardust sang his songs of darkness and disgrace. And it was alright, the band played all together. And it was alright, the song went on forever._

The record spins. Castiel studies the strange record album, that blue-jacketed alien-looking man leaning against a brick wall. “What is this?” he asks, eyes wide. Dean grins. He always smiles completely. It always starts in his eyes.

“This? _This?_ This, Cas, is rock and roll. And it is why we are _alive_.” Dean tilts his head, a half-chewed plastic straw hanging out of his mouth. “Where have you been, man? This is fuckin’ Bowie.”

“I wasn’t allowed.” His mother, who only allowed perfection across her door. The old poets, classical composers. Nothing so base as this. His mother, who was ascetic and pure and spare in her white dresses and white shirts, who must have still been a virgin when she’d given birth. The ambiguous sexuality of this album would never have been allowed. Castiel doesn’t know how to explain it. He is nervous; he is fascinated.

“What about your parents?” he asks. Dean has mentioned a brother, young and off at Stanford. He talks of Sam often, weaving his mentions of the younger brother through his words with pride, his chest puffed up and the sun catching in his eyes. He talks of Sam like other men talk of their own accomplishments (Dean never speaks of his own, but he will tell you the grades of all of Sam’s papers.) But in the great wealth of the times Dean has spoken of Sam, he has never mentioned anyone else. The green eyes are flat, distant.

“Dead.”

“Oh,” he says, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Dean flicks a bottlecap, “It’s not a big deal.” Castiel thinks of his own mother, blond and ice-eyed. His mother who gathers books like a magpie, who speaks like a knife. His own father is long-forgotten. Maybe he’s never met him, Castiel is not sure. _I wanted a child, so I had you,_ she had said. _Fathers were unnecessary._ (He knows in a secret way that Alan Larsen, age fifty-four, lives somewhere in St. Louis with two children. Half-siblings. He wants to write to them, his own blood. He does not. He plays along with this fiction his mother writes, that he had been born from her gaping skull fully formed.)

It’s no surprise that they both wound up here, seeking some kind of Graceland, caught in the spiderweb of the Chelsea Hotel. It is a weird, strange place. He looks for ghosts of old tenants in the wallpaper, beyond corners, up the twelve floors of the wide grand staircase. What about Tennessee Williams? Is he still here? Or the one that looms over them all, one year prior, where Nancy Spungen was gutted like a fish, left to bleed out into the cheap burgundy carpet. The blood had spread like night over the sea. She’d died there, in room one-hundred. Sid would stumble through another four months before overdosing on heroin, that’s all.

* * *

_Am I a good writer? Artist?_ He aches to know. It is difficult to judge yourself. He flies from one extreme distal end to the other, impressed with his art or equally devastated by it. Words are so much. He holds them in his arms, places them on his tongue (like a coin, like a tab of acid). He gets so _close_ to saying what he actually means. The words sit right next to that awful thing, the truth. Well, everyone says, I see what you mean. _No,_ he thinks, _no, no, no, let me try again._ He has no idea if he’s got any chance at being an artist but he hungers to be one.

 _Where are you going, where have you been?_ (Castiel knows you are supposed to write what you know. The trouble is that he’s lived for so long in a quiet room on a quiet lakeshore, with nothing but his mother and brother for company.)

_Think back. Further back._

As a child, Castiel had lived in the reeds. When he was ten, he had dug a moat for his sandcastle and let the grains dribble through his squat fingers. Gabriel had looked up from where he was crouched catching crabs, copper hair the color of new pennies. Mama waved to them from the kitchen window. Gabe had shielded his face from the weak sun, nodding. They dusted the sand off, leaving metal trowels struck in the earth like silver daggers. He climbed the steps up the dune, watching the cupola at the top of the house and taking them two at a time, feeling the sand work its way into his white socks and white tennis shoes. Mama always bought white. Linens and silks. “White is pure,” She had said once, “Clean and beautiful. Always seek beauty, Castiel.” Long strands of brown, dead grass scratched at him. Gabe puffed out his reddened cheeks and pulled his hands into his sweatshirt. Castiel had counted one-hundred and fifty driftwood steps to the lighthouse at the top of the dunes.

 _What kind of story is that?_ He’d rather write about something new, vibrant and shocking. The music Dean plays for him, which follows no rhythm he recognizes. Clashing and violent and climbing up in his veins with effervescent, angry life. _The New York Dolls,_ Dean had said. _The Ramones._ Dean had poured him onto the J train, had taken him to the grey and graffitied Bowery, into CBGB where he said _you’ll like this, she’s a poet too._ Patti Smith had played _Dancing Barefoot._ Castiel had liked that, had liked her. They both ate words like air.

Mostly, he wants to write about Dean. The trouble is that _you have to write what you know_. There is still so much to learn about Dean. _(What is on your arm?_ Castiel needs to know. It aches like a bulletwound.)

_Let me start with what I have already learned. One, you are beautiful. You were born in Lebanon, Kansas, center of the world, in January 1957. That was the year Elvis bought Graceland, On The Road was published, Sputnik was released into the sky. You drink beer like a fish, you never fold your clothes properly. You make noises about burgers and pie that I would like you to make about me. Your skin is tan, the color of sand, the color of dawn sky. Your eyes are green, like absinthe and grass, moss and mold. When you smile, I almost trip. I think you might have swallowed the sun._

_Let me list what I do not know. I do not know what your skin tastes like. Your arms, your stomach, your back. I do not know what you think about, late at night, your hand under the covers (you think you’re quiet, my hearing has always been good). Are you loud? Are you silent? Do you taste like you smell, of fireworks and smoke? Do you believe in fate? In love? In legend? If I peel away the leather jacket, take you out of the city, who are you?_

* * *

“What about after?” Castiel asks.

“After what?”

“After this, Dean? The band, the city? You can’t do this forever.” Dean looks distant, uncomfortable. Like he always does when Cas stands just a little too close.

“I don’t know, Cas. Never really thought about it, never really thought I’d make it to _after,_ you know.” It is hard for youth to contemplate _after_. We seem to exist within a vacuum, you and I, spread out against the sky with all the time in the world. We know we will age, wither, die, but it is not real and never urgent. We are not aware of the ticking time bombs that are our own bodies. That, one day, we will wake up and feel the lack of sand within ourselves, as the hourglass runs out. When the others, older and plainer, say _cherish your youth,_ we laugh. They are not young, they do not know what it is like to live in this boundless night. (They do, they have lost it, come to the end. It is a queer day to wake up, aged thirty-one, and realize that a chapter has ended, the book is a third of the way through. You cannot go back to the start.)

Dean pauses, twirls a pen between his fingers, “I’m not sure I wanna go anywhere else though.” There is nowhere better in the world for a kid wanting to be _something._ We gather our artists up, lock them in the Chelsea Hotel, throw their canvases up on the walls of museums, charge admission. (No flash photography please.) If you can create, we can consume. (Castiel has so much in him to spit out onto a page, he looks at the bleak emptiness of the notebook. It stares back, a challenging curl to its lip. _I dare you, go on. Use that pen. Say something._ Say something. What? _What should I say?_ He writes a sentence, frowns, scribbles it out. _No, no, no. Let me try again.)_

Cas nods.

“What do you think it’s gonna be like?” Dean asks.

“What do you mean, Dean?”  
  
“The future, Cas. The 80s? It’s so fuckin’ weird that the 70s are ending. What do you think will happen?” Castiel considers this. It is the end of a decade, they stand facing into blankness. 1979 had been a strange year. Pluto had delved within Neptune’s orbit, there had been an explosion at Three Mile Island, Pioneer 11 had dipped into Saturn, smallpox had died. He looks at Dean, the green eyes close on his own, standing far closer than he had told Castiel it was okay to stand. _I think it will be very different; something has changed._

“Well,” Cas says, swallowing. His pale eyes bright. “I think there will be a new Star Wars film out next year.” Dean looks at him in incredulous disbelief, grinning. He throws his head back and laughs. (It is like watching the dawn.)

“Fuckin’ _finally._ Did you just make a joke, Cas?”

* * *

“Dean, I am not jumping.” Castiel looks out over the edge of the rooftop, the narrow three feet to the next building. It is possible, certainly, to clear the jump. He has the body to do it. Young, healthy, coiled muscles like waves beneath skin. It is possible, certainly, to fall. This building is five stories tall, he would smash onto the concrete beneath, into that odd alley. Crack his skull wide open, break a rib or two.  
  
“Come on,” Dean holds his hand out, tan and wide-knuckled, nails bitten to the quick. “Do you trust me?”

 _No, absolutely not._ “Yes, Dean, I trust you,” he says, taking the other boy’s hand. (He can’t say no to Dean. He has never been able to.) The green eyes flicker, widen slightly. Castiel watches the other boy’s lips part.

They can both feel it. There is a strange desperation in the air, like kindling about to catch. Neither of them are sure what, but it is there, something, promising a change. Promising an end. (He always gets maudlin in December, when New Year’s comes close.) “Okay,” Dean laughs, his eyes crinkling like wrapping paper. “We won’t jump. You look _terrified,_ dude.” They look out at the sunrise, coming up over the city. There are no stars in the sky, there are never stars in the city. There is too much light pollution, too much cacophony of our own selves. When there is nothing to look up to, we keep our sights lower, aiming for lights on Fifth Avenue, lights on Broadway. “Cas,” Dean says, quiet and low and urgent, “Cas, you know I’m gonna kiss you, right?” _Yes, yes, please._

He closes his eyes. _Do not ever forget this moment, this one here, when Dean Winchester asked to kiss you._ “Yes.”

“Is that okay?”

“Yes.” He hears the other boy breathe out.  
  
“Okay,” Dean says, his breathing harsh. “Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?” There is a sea of silence, his eyes drag up, up the long, lean torso, up the brown leather jacket, the oil-bronze zipper, the wide cheekbones (terrified grasshopper eyes). Dean’s lips part slightly, he cannot breathe enough. Dean’s tongue licks his lips, vibrating with nerves, pressing his mouth to Castiel’s in a long, gentle pressure. Cas’ palms rest on Dean’s chest, the threadbare shirt does nothing to hide the other boy’s drumline heartbeat. All kisses are the same, tell the same story over and over again of addition and subtraction. One part open mouths, two parts hot breath. The story is always the same and always fascinating and Castiel has always been good at storytelling. He licks into Dean’s mouth, who keens into him. Dean’s square hands fist into Castiel’s jacket, seeking and dissatisfied, they ache for skin. Wool, they seem to suppose, will have to do.

“Hey,” Dean says. Castiel opens his eyes to skin the color of sand, the color of a moth’s wings. Dean is so close, their arms and faces, lips and noses catch like a key in the drum of a lock.

“Hey,” Castiel says, he swallows. Once, twice even. _Breathe, just breathe._ Dean’s eyes crinkle at the corners, the smile easy on his face. Cas wishes he could smile like that, without even thinking about it.

“Nothin’ really, just hey.” A siren calls in the background, the cars rush past them far below, their white headlights like a river of stars. It doesn’t matter. Dean’s hip is flush with his own, his rough-nailed fingers catching in Castiel’s waistband. His fingers are knocking, it is a question. He wants to answer; he doesn’t know how to answer. “Whatever you want, Cas, okay? Whatever you want,” Dean breathes. _Want._ Castiel wants. He does not know what he wants but he is glutted with the wave of _want._ He wants to swallow Dean whole, be laid bare under the starless sky.

“Dean,” he whispers, low voice dragged lower to the ground still, thick with want. “I want everything.” Those eyes (green like bottle flies, like beer bottles, like stained glass) open wide, there is a hitch in the breath. Sweetest of all, those questioning fingers tighten at the waist, hooking in behind the denim, pulling Castiel closer still. Castiel cannot breathe, there is no room between them for air.

“So, um,” Dean says, “I gotta show you somethin’.” Castiel already knows. _The heartmark._ He had always wondered what this moment would be like. His heart races, faster than a train. Stuck between stations. He is aching and desperate and wanting to tear at Dean and come apart in his hands. Hot and cold, his skin prickles. Sweating, aching, needy.

“Show me,” he says. Dean swallows and nods, pulling the jacket from his shoulders. His large, rough hands unbutton the cuff of the shirt, rolling it up just past the bend of the elbow. His arms are golden and vascular. Castiel feels a pulse of arousal shoot through him at the large threading of veins. And there, centered and in black letters, is a simple sentence. _Yes, Dean, I trust you._ He stares up at Dean with wide and bright cornflower-blue eyes. In silence, he mirrors the other boy, unbuttons the cuff, shoves the sleeve up (a little too quick, a little too fast). The words sit there, black as the day he was born and as sharp. _Come on, do you trust me?_

“Fuck,” Dean breathes, “fuck.” He bends, touches his mouth to the sentence. Kisses the words. It is rapture. Castiel keens in the night. _Oh God, I’m going to die. I need you._

Dean spreads the brown leather jacket over the ground, over the grey asphalt rooftop. Cas follows him, down against the cool cement. The older boy licks a trail up the side of Castiel’s throat, fumbling at the artery, the curve of his muscle, the jut of his jaw. He sucks at Castiel’s lower lip. Cas’ hands splay, desperate and needy (he has never been touched, he is adrift in options, in new sensations, new knowledge). He does not know where to settle them, so he grips at Dean’s chest, his hips. His body is a quicker study than he is and Dean’s thigh quickly finds its way between Castiel’s legs, where his is aching and hard and dark, and Cas ruts like a wild animal into the other boy. Thrusts with that unknown, DNA-encoded knowledge passed down from creation that all animals possess. “I want you so much,” he whispers, watching Dean’s eyes clench shut, feeling the grip on his arms tighten with need.

“Yeah, Cas,” Dean whispers, hot breath against his skin, the condensation rapidly cooling in the night air. “Shit, dude, me too.” Dean pulls their clothes open, reaches down into Castiel’s jeans. _Oh my god,_ Castiel thinks. He is desperate as a car crash. That first hesitant touch, skin to skin, Dean’s hot hand on Castiel’s cock. It is so much, _too much._ He throws his head back, back into the pillow of the jacket, surrounded by the scent of leather and sweat, Dean’s aftershave, cigarette smoke, concrete.

“ _More_ ,” he whines. Dean ruts into his leg, hard as stone, hard as concrete and skyscrapers. Castiel won’t last long. It doesn’t matter, this is _radiance._ He thinks of the Bible, of Sodom and Gomorrah. _They must have gotten it wrong, how can this be anything but Heaven?_ If it is not Heaven, Castiel knows, he will walk away from the clouds, the golden gates. He will take one look at Dean Winchester, who is damaged and golden, this common vandal of light, and jump right off of the clouds. He would fall. Heaven is what you make of it.

* * *

The next time he wakes, he is not alone. It is much later, back at the Chelsea. They had walked home in traded shy smiles and quiet.

Dean sits cross-legged on his bed, pen and notebook in hand. _I am going to love you, I might die with how much I will love you. This cannot possibly be sustained. I will burn myself out._ Castiel inhales him, just like he did the first time. The recipe is simple. Plenty of men have tan skin and green eyes (like manila sketchbook paper, like chlorophyll), none of them wear it quite like this. Beauty hangs on Dean like it did once on Ganymede. Dean looks up at Castiel’s stirring, drops the pen in hand. “Hey,” he says. (Ever the last as the first.)

“Hey,” Cas says. Blink away sleep from sea-dark eyes.

“Cas,” Dean says, eyes half-open, cloaked in streetlamp light streaming through the window. “Come over here.” He holds the blankets up. Castiel doesn’t hesitate, he never hesitates. (He is always blind to Dean, trusting and full.) Dean’s heartbeat is steady as a tide against his ear, he listens to the ocean.

“I’m gonna fall in love with you,” Dean whispers, “if that’s okay?” Swell, explosion, crash. His heart has swallowed the world, expanded like a sun into a red dwarf.

“Dean,” Castiel murmurs, “I already have.”

* * *

The terrifying truth is, there is no such thing as a happy ending. Loss waits, it may take years, decades. We all know that the other side of love is to lose that love. Perhaps you will walk away. Perhaps you will slip into the nothingness at the end of time. Every creature in love knows it will someday be gone. All humans bear conflict, we fight it out, straining into the face of this cold rock hurtling through space. Castiel is no different, has been given no guidance, is a pile of atoms trying desperately to make sense of himself.

Why is there archaeology? Because there is loss. We sift through old rubble, looking for a broken-down and lost Eden. The archaeologists pick up the pieces, try to understand. They pin us to a board, straight needle through the heart like a butterfly to an entomologist. They look at our bodies, try to understand how we got to this point, dead and forgotten. Try to ask, _how can we not?_ If we study a lost city, we ask how can we not also fall?

Castiel has always wanted to know more than the old stories would tell. He hates endings. They fade to black, they give no guidance on how to bear forth. He was told then, _imagine it, once upon a time there was a man who loved a crane disguised as a woman. To help make ends meet, the crane wife would pluck the feathers from her own skin and weave them into silk to sell. She said do not look at me when I am weaving but he was greedy, he wanted too much, he looked in the room. And he saw the truth, her mottled and plucked skin. She left in a hurry, never to return._ (Castiel would look up from the end of the book, mystified. Infuriated. But where did she go, he wants to ask. Will she be alright?)

It is a strange realization that _after_ does not matter. There is no score, no wins, no losses. He floats in nothingness, standing in the middle of New York, the middle of Graceland (where we are born, where we will all return), sitting next to a boy with chapped lips, bitten nails. Who wears the same expression on his mouth, in his eyes.

_Maybe it doesn’t matter. Fate, getting a poem published, being remembered. Avalon, the promised land. Maybe it’s not a place, maybe it’s you, sitting next to me. Sharing your breath, sharing your soda. I love you. Maybe that’s all that matters right now._

“You think too much, Cas,” Dean says, taking the Coke bottle from Cas’ hands, setting it to the side.

“I do?” Castiel blinks.

“Yeah,” Dean breathes, star-eyed, “Come on, I’ll show you how to stop.”


End file.
